“At this rate it’ll take us the rest of the afternoon to get everything in camp,” muttered Bob, amused and yet angered at the stubborn beast.
The youth guessed fairly right. The sun was almost ready to sink below the horizon when the last box was unloaded from the cart, after five trips had been made to carry all of the supplies.
“Too late to do anything tonight,” said Mr. Lewis, as the Indian, mule, and cart disappeared over the plateau. “I suppose we’d better take it easy, anyway. We’ll have some busy days ahead of us.”
Early the next morning the explorers were up preparing for the mountain journey.
“The first thing now is to get mules,” said Mr. Wallace. “And,” he added with twinkling eyes, “they’ll have to be faster than the one that carried our stuff last night.”
“You forgot.” Dr. Brown, the physician, was moving up to Mr. Wallace. “The first thing isn’t to get mules,” the doctor continued with a smile. “Medical attention always comes before anything else.”
“That means a physical examination?” asked Bob.
“Yes. And it also means vaccination against smallpox and typhoid fever. Those two diseases are very common in this part of Peru.”
Dr. Brown had attended to everyone but the youths and Mr. Wallace. But it did not take long to finish with them.
“Now as I was saying,” began Mr. Wallace, “the next thing is to get mules. And I know where we can find them. I inquired yesterday and found that a wealthy Peruvian who lives at the edge of Cuzco can let us have as many as we need. He will also see that we get native guides.”